Random Posting

[gwalchmai]

1 hour ago, tous said:

Stump lives matter. 

Can't you just hook up the Miata and pull that sucker out?

The Kubota tried and failed to budge the stump. Not enough to get a good hold of for pulling, and too deeply rooted for pushing. We could dig it out and cut the roots, but that too closely resembles work, while burning it allows opportunities with weenies and marshmallows. 

[tous]

Have you tried  telling the stump to act less white?

Maybe it will just up and leave in shame and go down to Atlanta for a Coca Cola.

Or, tell the stump that Maxine Waters is a-comin for it and it best get out of town.

Edited April 19, 2021 by tous

[Paul53]

53 minutes ago, gwalchmai said:

The Kubota tried and failed to budge the stump. Not enough to get a good hold of for pulling, and too deeply rooted for pushing. We could dig it out and cut the roots, but that too closely resembles work, while burning it allows opportunities with weenies and marshmallows. 

Warn the stump you know of an osprey the snatches sharks and the stump could be next.

[Historian]

3 hours ago, Eric said:

Is ‘tilling your flowerbed’ a euphemism?

God...i hope so.

But if i was asked to do a tilling...i'd drop my phone and be home faster than a you can say..."Till me."

[Historian]

1 hour ago, Schmidt Meister said:

Having been raised in Florida, I've seen Ospreys and Bald Eagles snatch almost every kind of fish out of the water, but this is the first time I've ever seen one snag a shark, it's a small hammerhead or bonnethead, can't tell the way he's got it gripped. Not my picture.

 

That looks like a bonnet.

I was on a range one late evening...training...about 20 of us...and in the sun set we watched a great bird rise with a snake in it's clutches.

The bird dropped the snake.  Did a loop and caught it mid-air...and flew away.

Snake.  It was your time.

It was a tough crowd that night.  All of us...had an understanding.

[Schmidt Meister]

On April 19, 1993, at Mount Carmel in Waco, Texas, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) launches a tear-gas assault on the Branch Davidian compound, ending a tense 51-day standoff between the federal government and an armed religious cult. By the end of the day, the compound was burned to the ground, and some 80 Branch Davidians, including 22 children, had perished in the inferno.

On February 28, 1993, agents of the U.S. Treasury Department’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) launched a raid against the Branch Davidian compound as part of an investigation into illegal possession of firearms and explosives by the Christian cult. As the agents attempted to penetrate the complex, gunfire erupted, beginning an extended gun battle that left four ATF agents dead and 15 wounded. Six Branch Davidians were fatally wounded, and several more were injured, including David Koresh, the cult’s founder and leader. After 45 minutes of shooting, the ATF agents withdrew, and a cease-fire was negotiated over the telephone. The operation, which involved more than 100 ATF agents, was one of the largest ever mounted by the bureau and resulted in the highest casualties of any ATF operation.

David Koresh was born Vernon Wayne Howell in Houston, Texas, in 1959. In 1981, he joined the Branch Davidians, a sect of the Seventh Day Adventist Church founded in 1934 by a Bulgarian immigrant named Victor Houteff. Koresh, who possessed an exhaustive knowledge of the Bible, rapidly rose in the hierarchy of the small religious community, eventually entering into a power struggle with the Davidians’ leader, George Roden.

For a short time, Koresh retreated with his followers to eastern Texas, but in late 1987 he returned to Mount Carmel with seven armed followers and raided the compound, severely wounding Roden. Koresh went on trial for attempted murder, but the charge was dropped after his case was declared a mistrial. By 1990, he was the leader of the Branch Davidians and legally changed his name to David Koresh, with David representing his status as head of the biblical House of David, and Koresh standing for the Hebrew name for Cyrus, the Persian king who allowed the Jews held captive in Babylon to return to Israel.

Koresh took several wives at Mount Carmel and fathered at least 12 children from these women, several of whom were as young as 12 or 13 when they became pregnant. There is also evidence that Koresh may have harshly disciplined some of the 100 or so Branch Davidians living inside the compound, particularly his children. A central aspect of Koresh’s religious teachings was his assertion that the apocalyptic events predicted in the Bible’s book of Revelation were imminent, making it necessary, he asserted, for the Davidians to stockpile weapons and explosives in preparation.

Following the unsuccessful ATF raid, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) took over the situation. A standoff with the Branch Davidians stretched into seven weeks, and little progress was made in the telephone negotiations, as the Davidians had stockpiled years of food and other necessities before the raid.

On April 18, U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno approved a tear-gas assault on the compound, and at approximately 6:00 a.m. on April 19 the Branch Davidians were informed of the imminent attack and asked to surrender, which they refused to do. A few minutes later, two FBI combat vehicles began inserting gas into the building and were joined by Bradley tanks, which fired tear-gas canisters through the compound’s windows. The Branch Davidians, many with gas masks on, refused to evacuate, and by 11:40 a.m. the last of some 100 tear-gas canisters was fired into the compound. Just after noon, a fire erupted at one or more locations on the compound, and minutes later nine Davidians fled the rapidly spreading blaze. Gunfire was reported but ceased as the compound was completely engulfed by the flames.

Koresh and at least 80 of his followers, including 22 children, died during the federal government’s second disastrous assault on Mount Carmel. The FBI and the Justice Department maintained there was conclusive evidence that the Branch Davidian members ignited the fire, citing an eyewitness account and various forensic data. Of the gunfire reported during the fire, the government argued that the Davidians were either killing each other as part of a suicide pact or were killing dissenters who attempted to escape the Koresh-ordered suicide by fire. Most of the surviving Branch Davidians contested this official position, as do some critics in the press and elsewhere, whose charges against the ATF and FBI’s handling of the Waco standoff ranged from incompetence to premeditated murder. In 1999, the FBI admitted they used tear-gas grenades in the assault, which have been known to cause fires because of their incendiary properties.

[Schmidt Meister]

On April 19, 1943, in Warsaw, Poland, Nazi forces attempting to clear out the city’s Jewish ghetto are met by gunfire from Jewish resistance fighters, and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising begins.

Shortly after the German occupation of Poland began, the Nazis forced the city’s Jewish citizens into a “ghetto” surrounded by barbwire and armed SS guards. The Warsaw ghetto occupied an area of less than two square miles but soon held almost 500,000 Jews in deplorable conditions. Disease and starvation killed thousands every month, and beginning in July 1942, 6,000 Jews per day were transferred to the Treblinka concentration camp. Although the Nazis assured the remaining Jews that their relatives and friends were being sent to work camps, word soon reached the ghetto that deportation to the camp meant extermination. An underground resistance group was established in the ghetto, the Jewish Combat Organization (ZOB), and limited arms were acquired at great cost.

On January 18, 1943, when the Nazis entered the ghetto to prepare a group for transfer, a ZOB unit ambushed them. Fighting lasted for several days, and a number of Germans soldiers were killed before they withdrew. On April 19, Nazi leader Heinrich Himmler announced that the ghetto was to be emptied of its residents in honor of Hitler’s birthday the following day, and more than 1,000 S.S. soldiers entered the confines with tanks and heavy artillery. Although many of the ghetto’s remaining 60,000 Jewish dwellers attempted to hide themselves in secret bunkers, more than 1,000 ZOB members met the Germans with gunfire and homemade bombs. Suffering moderate casualties, the Germans initially withdrew but soon returned, and on April 24 launched an all-out attack against the Warsaw Jews.

Thousands were slaughtered as the Germans systematically progressed down the ghettos, blowing up the buildings one by one. The ZOB took to the sewers to continue the fight, but on May 8 their command bunker fell to the Germans and their resistant leaders committed suicide. By May 16, the ghetto was firmly under Nazi control, and mass deportation of the last Warsaw Jews to Treblinka began. During the uprising, some 300 German soldiers were killed, and thousands of Warsaw Jews were massacred. Virtually all those who survived the Uprising to reach Treblinka were dead by the end of the war.

[Schmidt Meister]

On April 19, 1995, just after 9 a.m., a massive truck bomb explodes outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The blast collapsed the north face of the nine-story building, instantly killing more than 100 people and trapping dozens more in the rubble. Emergency crews raced to Oklahoma City from across the country, and when the rescue effort finally ended two weeks later the death toll stood at 168 people killed, including 19 young children who were in the building’s day-care center at the time of the blast.

On April 21, the massive manhunt for suspects in the worst terrorist attack ever committed on U.S. soil by an American resulted in the capture of Timothy McVeigh, a 27-year-old former U.S. Army soldier who matched an eyewitness description of a man seen at the scene of the crime. On the same day, Terry Nichols, an associate of McVeigh’s, surrendered at Herington, Kansas, after learning that the police were looking for him. Both men were found to be members of a radical right-wing survivalist group based in Michigan, and on August 8 John Fortier, who knew of McVeigh’s plan to bomb the federal building, agreed to testify against McVeigh and Nichols in exchange for a reduced sentence. Two days later, a grand jury indicted McVeigh and Nichols on murder and conspiracy charges.

While still in his teens, Timothy McVeigh acquired a penchant for guns and began honing survivalist skills he believed would be necessary in the event of a Cold War showdown with the Soviet Union. Lacking direction after high school, he enlisted in the U.S. Army and proved a disciplined and meticulous soldier. It was during this time that he befriended Terry Nichols, a fellow 13 years his senior, who shared his survivalist interests.

In early 1991, McVeigh served in the Persian Gulf War and was decorated with several medals for a brief combat mission. Despite these honors, he was discharged from the U.S. Army at the end of the year, one of many casualties of the U.S. military downsizing that came after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Another result of the Cold War’s end was that McVeigh shifted his ideology from a hatred of foreign communist governments to a suspicion of the U.S. federal government, especially as its new elected leader, Democrat Bill Clinton, had successfully campaigned for the presidency on a platform of gun control.

The August 1992 shoot-out between federal agents and survivalist Randy Weaver at his cabin in Idaho, in which Weaver’s wife and son were killed, followed by the April 19, 1993, inferno near Waco, Texas, that killed some 80 Branch Davidians, deeply radicalized McVeigh, Nichols, and their associates. In early 1995, Nichols and McVeigh planned an attack on the federal building in Oklahoma City, which housed, among other federal agencies, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), the agency that had launched the initial raid on the Branch Davidian compound in 1993.

On April 19, 1995, the two-year anniversary of the disastrous end to the Waco standoff, McVeigh parked a Ryder rental truck loaded with a diesel-fuel-fertilizer bomb outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City and fled. Minutes later, the massive bomb exploded, killing 168 people.

On June 2, 1997, McVeigh was convicted on 15 counts of murder and conspiracy, and on August 14, under the unanimous recommendation of the jury, was sentenced to die by lethal injection. Michael Fortier was sentenced to 12 years in prison and fined $200,000 for failing to warn authorities about McVeigh’s bombing plans. Terry Nichols was found guilty on one count of conspiracy and eight counts of involuntary manslaughter, and was sentenced to life in prison

In December 2000, McVeigh asked a federal judge to stop all appeals of his convictions and to set a date for his execution. Federal Judge Richard Matsch granted the request. On June 11, 2001, McVeigh, 33, died of lethal injection at the U.S. penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana. He was the first federal prisoner to be put to death since 1963.

[Schmidt Meister]

On April 19, 1861, the first blood of the American Civil War is shed when a secessionist mob in Baltimore attacks Massachusetts troops bound for Washington, D.C. Four soldiers and 12 rioters were killed.

One week earlier, on April 12, the Civil War began when Confederate shore batteries opened fire on Union-held Fort Sumter in South Carolina’s Charleston Bay. During a 34-hour period, 50 Confederate guns and mortars launched more than 4,000 rounds at the poorly supplied fort. The fort’s garrison returned fire, but lacking men, ammunition, and food, it was forced to surrender on April 13. There were no casualties in the fighting, but one federal soldier was killed the next day when a store of gunpowder was accidentally ignited during the firing of the final surrender salute. Two other federal soldiers were wounded, one mortally.

On April 15, President Abraham Lincoln issued a public proclamation calling for 75,000 volunteer soldiers to help put down the Southern “insurrection.” Northern states responded enthusiastically to the call, and within days the 6th Massachusetts Regiment was en route to Washington. On April 19, the troops arrived in Baltimore, Maryland, by train, disembarked, and boarded horse-drawn cars that were to take them across the city to where the rail line picked up again. Secessionist sympathy was strong in Maryland, a border state where slavery was legal, and an angry mob of secessionists gathered to confront the Yankee troops.

Hoping to prevent the regiment from reaching the railroad station, and thus Washington, the mob blocked the carriages, and the troops were forced to continue on foot. The mob followed close behind and then, joined by other rioters, surrounded the regiment. Jeering turned to brick and stone throwing, and several federal troops responded by firing into the crowd. In the ensuing mayhem, the troops fought their way to the train station, taking and inflicting more casualties. At the terminal, the infantrymen were aided by Baltimore police, who held the crowd back and allowed them to board their train and escape. Much of their equipment was left behind. Four soldiers and 12 rioters were killed in what is generally regarded as the first bloodshed of the Civil War. Maryland officials demanded that no more federal troops be sent through the state, and secessionists destroyed rail bridges and telegraph lines to Washington to hinder the federal war effort. In May, Union troops occupied Baltimore, and martial law was declared. The federal occupation of Baltimore, and of other strategic points in Maryland, continued throughout the war. Because western Marylanders and workingmen supported the Union, and because federal authorities often jailed secessionist politicians, Maryland never voted for secession. Slavery was abolished in Maryland in 1864, the year before the Civil War’s end. Eventually, more than 50,000 Marylanders fought for the Union while about 22,000 volunteered for the Confederacy.

[Schmidt Meister]

On April 19, 1775, at about 5 a.m., 700 British troops, on a mission to capture Patriot leaders and seize a Patriot arsenal, march into Lexington to find 77 armed minutemen under Captain John Parker waiting for them on the town’s common green. British Major John Pitcairn ordered the outnumbered Patriots to disperse, and after a moment’s hesitation the Americans began to drift off the green. Suddenly, a shot was fired from an undetermined gun, and a cloud of musket smoke soon covered the green. When the brief Battle of Lexington ended, eight Americans lay dead or dying and 10 others were wounded. Only one British soldier was injured, but the American Revolution had begun.

By 1775, tensions between the American colonies and the British government approached the breaking point, especially in Massachusetts, where Patriot leaders formed a shadow revolutionary government and trained militias to prepare for armed conflict with the British troops occupying Boston. In the spring of 1775, General Thomas Gage, the British governor of Massachusetts, received instructions from England to seize all stores of weapons and gunpowder accessible to the American insurgents. On April 18, he ordered British troops to march against the Patriot arsenal at Concord and capture Patriot leaders Samuel Adams and John Hancock, known to be hiding at Lexington.

The Boston Patriots had been preparing for such a military action by the British for some time, and upon learning of the British plan, Patriots Paul Revere and William Dawes were ordered to set out to rouse the militiamen and warn Adams and Hancock. When the British troops arrived at Lexington, Adams, Hancock, and Revere had already fled to Philadelphia, and a group of militiamen were waiting. The Patriots were routed within minutes, but warfare had begun, leading to calls to arms across the Massachusetts countryside.

When the British troops reached Concord at about 7 a.m., they found themselves encircled by hundreds of armed Patriots. They managed to destroy the military supplies the Americans had collected but were soon advanced against by a gang of minutemen, who inflicted numerous casualties. Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith, the overall commander of the British force, ordered his men to return to Boston without directly engaging the Americans. As the British retraced their 16-mile journey, their lines were constantly beset by Patriot marksmen firing at them Indian-style from behind trees, rocks, and stone walls. At Lexington, Captain Parker’s militia had its revenge, killing several British soldiers as the Red Coats hastily marched through his town. By the time the British finally reached the safety of Boston, nearly 300 British soldiers had been killed, wounded, or were missing in action. The Patriots suffered fewer than 100 casualties.

The battles of Lexington and Concord were the first battles of the American Revolution, a conflict that would escalate from a colonial uprising into a world war that, seven years later, would give birth to the independent United States of America.

[Schmidt Meister]

April 19th in Music.

1969 - ”Good Times, Bad Times," the first Led Zeppelin single, reaches its chart peak of #80 in America.

Birthdays:

1942 - Alan Price. English musician, keyboards with The Animals who had the 1964 US No. 1 single 'House Of The Rising Sun'. Born in Fatfield, England.

1947 - Mark Volman. American guitarist from The Turtles who had the US 1967 No. 1 single 'Happy Together' and the 1967 hit 'She'd Rather Be with Me'. He later worked with Frank Zappa. Born in Los Angeles, California.

1956 - Tony Martin. English singer, best known for his time fronting Black Sabbath, initially from 1987 to 1991 and again from 1993 to 1997. Martin was the band's second longest serving vocalist after Ozzy Osbourne.

[railfancwb]

1 hour ago, tous said:

Have you tried  telling the stump to act less white?

Maybe it will just up and leave in shame and go down to Atlanta for a Coca Cola.

Or, tell the stump that Maxine Waters is a-comin for it and it best get out of town.

You mean a Woke Cola now dontcha?

[tous]

Using your best Kurt Russell voice, tell the stump, You tell 'em I'm comin' -- and Hell's comin' with me.

 

[Historian]

Egads!

 

[ChuteTheMall]

[Swampfox762]

51 minutes ago, Historian said:

Egads!

 

God...It's been YEARS since I had Spam.  Only way I really liked it was fried as breakfast meat, in thin slices, Or...fried the same way and put on a grilled cheese.  DAMN...I might have to pick up a can of Spam...and "remember"... "Grilled cheese and fried spam"...  Seriously...Fried Spam is GREAT!!!  I don't care where it comes from...It TASTES good!!!  

I have a Grilled cheese sandwich least...a couple times a month.  Gonna have to get a can of spam...go back to my roots....

[railfancwb]

7 minutes ago, Swampfox762 said:

God...It's been YEARS since I had Spam.  Only way I really liked it was fried as breakfast meat, in thin slices, Or...fried the same way and put on a grilled cheese.  DAMN...I might have to pick up a can of Spam...and "remember"... "Grilled cheese and fried spam"...  Seriously...Fried Spam is GREAT!!!  I don't care where it comes from...It TASTES good!!!  

I have a Grilled cheese sandwich least...a couple times a month.  Gonna have to get a can of spam...go back to my roots....

Spam is a diet staple and menu item in Hawaii

[railfancwb]

8 hours ago, Swampfox762 said:

However, creating more laws makes it easier to control normal citizens. “Show me the man I’ll find you the crime.”

[Silentpoet]

[Historian]

58 minutes ago, Swampfox762 said:

God...It's been YEARS since I had Spam. 

Gads! It's been about two weeks since i had spam!

[Historian]

52 minutes ago, railfancwb said:

Spam is a diet staple and menu item in Hawaii

 

[janice6]

15 hours ago, Huaco Kid said:

Some of the most competent engineers I've known couldn't compose a coherent email.  To the point of hilarity.

When we put proposals together for the Navy it was embarrassing what some PhD's would write.  Like they never put together a technical paper before.

I honestly got good comments back on my sections of the proposals.  I never told anyone that I wrote them for an 8th grade level reader!

[Batesmotel]

I have a great friend who has multiple degrees in multiple engineering fields. He is freaking brilliant. He not only handle the math and engineering but the hands on trade skills to machine and weld up a prototype as well. 
 

He uses a professional technical writer for all of his documents. 

[tous]

1 hour ago, janice6 said:

When we put proposals together for the Navy it was embarrassing what some PhD's would write.  Like they never put together a technical paper before.

I honestly got good comments back on my sections of the proposals.  I never told anyone that I wrote them for an 8th grade level reader!

 

29 minutes ago, Batesmotel said:

I have a great friend who has multiple degrees in multiple engineering fields. He is freaking brilliant. He not only handle the math and engineering but the hands on trade skills to machine and weld up a prototype as well. 
 

He uses a professional technical writer for all of his documents. 

Consider that in order to attain a post-graduate degree, one must a) write a master's thesis (at least in my day) and b) write a doctoral dissertation.

None of these documents are considered valid if poorly written and the degree will nor be awarded.

I understand that it is popular to characterize those with post-graduate degrees as somehow being oafs, absent-minded, eccentric or just plain clueless compared to the cool kids.

 

 

Edited April 20, 2021 by tous

[Paul53]